When does coaching become detrimental to project success? – Ryan Knapton 0

Posted on 14, July 2011

in Category practitioner experience

I was sitting with my wife the other day, enjoying a bright summer’s afternoon and having a bit of a chat. We were discussing our experiences during interviews, and chuckling about certain questions that inevitably get bandied around during the process (yes, we are nerds!). One question that always pops up is about teamwork: are you a team player, etc, etc.  Now we both like to think of ourselves as efficient individuals, people who get things done. Hence we were amusing ourselves by hypothesising at how an interviewer would react if one of us said during an interview that I am not a team player, and that if the interviewer wanted to get something done, hire me, but if not, find someone else.

Now naturally we both believe in the benefits of teamwork, however sometimes I find that I can get things done faster if I do it on my own. In this article I don’t want to explore how delegation should occur on BA teams (that is for another day, and requires a different skill set).

Instead I want to pose the question:

When is coaching fellow BA’s a hindrance to the overall success of a project?

In the majority of instances, coaching is important

Coaching is an important aspect of growing team members. We all learn from each other, and different experiences make us better analysts. Coaching benefits both parties, the coachee learns more efficient skills, while the coach receives a number of softer, qualitative benefits and also learns skills around communication, expectation management, delegation etc.

The coaching process improves the organisation too. It creates better BA’s within the company, whether those BA’s are part of permanent or virtual teams. Future projects will be better managed and analysed because the overall skills within the organisation have increased. But what about a current project?

What about the minority of instances?

Coaching takes time and unfortunately not many people have the luxury of learning outside of the job. Of course there are examples, many of which are addressed on this site under the ‘Help a BA’ section, where coaching is done outside of the job. But that is different to on-the-job coaching. What happens if you could get things done faster without having to coach someone? What happens if you could get a task done in half the time it takes a BA who is learning something new (soft or hard skills)? Some projects have extremely tight deadlines, such as when a new legislative act brings about changes to core processing systems. Can coaching really be possible on every project?

Please don’t misinterpret what I am trying to say. I wholeheartedly believe in coaching. I think that it is an essential aspect of team dynamics. I would just like to debate whether it is always appropriate, and whether certain projects can afford to have BA’s coaching other BA’s. Of course not all projects will actually result in any coaching taking place (as not all projects will have BA’s learning new skills), but where the possibility does exist, I wonder if it’s worth asking the question: Can this project afford for any coaching to take place?

This article originally appeared on Bridging the Gap on 14 July 2011. Click here to view the original article.